


Captive Werewolves

by trustbutverify



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Talia Hale, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Friend Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Canon-Typical Violence, Feral Behavior, Full Shift Werewolves, Good Peter Hale, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Relationship(s), Left Hand Peter Hale, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Power Imbalance, Power Imbalance Consent Issues, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, The Hale Family (Teen Wolf) Lives, Werewolf Courting, Werewolves Viewed As Animals, Zoologist Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:21:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustbutverify/pseuds/trustbutverify
Summary: Stiles has dreamed about being a zoologist since he was twelve years old and went on a school field trip to visit The Preserve, the local reserve that houses the Hale Pack when they aren't on display at the San Diego Zoo. After years of college and mounds of student loans, Stiles is lucky enough to get the opportunity to interview for the position as the zoologist for the Hale Pack, a job that will not only fulfill his longtime dream of working directly with Were's but also keep him from having to move away from his father to do it.Were's have been an extinct in the wild species for almost thirty years, there are only a handful of established healthy packs left in the world. Working with them turns out to be so much more than Stiles ever imagined. He knew they were smart, they had to be to have blended in for as long as they did with humans, but he didn't expect how human they would be or how that would make him feel.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 7
Kudos: 56





	Captive Werewolves

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first foray into Teen Wolf fiction, and I freely admit that I gave up on the TV series after they put Peter in Eichon House. I felt like the series and the characters had so much potential, and I just couldn't handle all of the new people and the plot lines that deviated from where I so desperately wanted the show to go with these characters. So that being said, I have ignored a whole lot of stuff that I just didn't want to deal with!

Stiles bounced his foot and looked around the waiting area for the fourth time in as many seconds. It hadn’t changed since the last glance around, but the urge to do another sweep of the room was hard to resist with his nerves wreaking havoc on him like they were. This was the single most important interview of his life. The last six years of college and the massive amount of student loans he was now responsible for paying back had all been in preparation for this one interview.

“Mr. Stilinski?” A handsome middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair that did horrible things to the not quite explored Daddy kink that Stiles would never admit to having leaned around the door frame to raise an eyebrow in Stiles' direction.

“Yes Sir!” Stiles popped up out of the hard plastic chair he’d been waiting in for the last fifteen minutes like a jack in the box and walked quickly towards the office, holding his hand out to the older man.

“Chris Argent, I’m the director here at The Preserve.” Chris’ handshake was firm when he grasped Stiles', gentling the overly nervous pumping that Stiles' own hand was doing. 

Chris smiled knowingly and stepped back to gesture for Stiles to enter the office. It was a large space and free of clutter. Glass windows took up the entire back wall and Stiles was pretty sure the acreage he could see out of that window was part of the habitat the Weres were kept in. He forced his gaze away from the window and turned his attention back onto Chris.

“It’s great to meet you, Sir. I really appreciate the opportunity to interview for this position, it’s been my dream job since I was a kid!” Stiles rambled.

He tried to rein himself in, to think back over the bullet points that the article on Google had guaranteed would help him nail this job interview. As far as he could remember babbling like an excited toddler had not been on that list.

“You’re local to Beacon Hills, aren’t you?” Chris asked, gesturing to a chair in front of his desk.

“Yes Sir, that’s one of the biggest draws to this particular position. I could try for a position with another facility, but this one would keep me from having to relocate.” Stiles sat down while Chris made his way to the office chair behind the desk. 

Chris nodded as he settled back into the chair, flipping open a file laid out on the desk. “I can see the appeal there. Your resume says you have a BA from Berkley and you did your Masters work at UF. Did you get much hands-on experience with Were’s in Florida?”

“Not much hands-on, no. There are two Omega’s in the area that we worked with as a part of our course requirements, but the only hands-on we were able to do were when the Were was sedated. Both of them were too feral to be considered safe to have contact with. I also did some rescue work over two of my summer breaks with a couple of organizations that are trying to cut down on the illegal pet trade, but again, not any actual hands-on experience there either.” Stiles grimaced a little, wishing he could answer in a way that made him sound more qualified for the job. But getting hands-on experience with Were's, even as a student in the program, was extremely difficult with their limited numbers.

“That’s pretty standard for anybody just coming out of school, the facilities with established healthy packs don’t generally open their doors to students. Were’s appreciate routine, and a new batch of students every semester wouldn’t do a whole lot to keep them settled.” Chris shuffled through a few more pages in the folder before settling back in his chair to watch Stiles.

“There aren’t many places to get much actual hands-on experience with Were’s.” Stiles agreed.

“But you do have experience with Omega’s, which I think is the best way to learn to respect all Were’s and what they can be capable of. The pack that we have here at The Preserve is an established and healthy pack that’s been in Beacon Hills for three generations. All of the Were’s currently in the pack are captive bred and well bonded. These Were's are much stronger than any of the Omega’s you’ve worked with in the past.” Chris watched him closely while he talked, giving Stiles the impression this part of the interview was more important than the casual tone of Chris’ voice was letting on.

“I absolutely have a healthy respect for what a Were is capable of. I’ve … seen the damage that they can do.” Stiles kept eye contact with Chris and let that statement sink in. He didn’t feel the need to go into detail about the grad student Stiles had seen flung across the exam room when the sedated Were on the table had started to wake up. The poor guy had been a limping canvas of purples and greens all mottled together in vivid bruises for two weeks.

“Good. I won’t have someone on my staff that doesn’t understand the risks involved. That being said, we haven’t had an incident on The Preserve since before I started working here and I’ve been here for over fifteen years. All of the Hale pack is captive-bred, they’re used to the routine and the people that take care of them. Of course, we have our trouble makers, but the Were’s here are anchored and secure in their pack bonds. So while we are always aware of the potential for danger, the Hale’s aren’t feral.” Chris assured.

“So does that mean I have the job?” Stiles perked up.

Chris barked out a laugh, shaking his head. “No, that means I’m comfortable enough with your awareness of the potential for harm that I’m willing to actually interview you for the position.”

Stiles chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, I guess I was getting a little ahead of myself.”

The rest of the interview was fairly technical, Chris drilling Stiles on the day to day needs of Were’s and asking him hypothetical questions to cover a variety of scenarios. One point Stiles made that he felt went in his favor was the changes he’d like to make to the Hale packs diet. Their last zoologist had met all of the dietary requirements for a healthy Were meal plan, but it was a raw diet with very little variety. Stiles knew that recent studies had shown a more varied diet led to happier Were’s, and happy Were’s were much more likely to reproduce than unhappy Were’s. Considering Were’s had been an extinct in the wild species for almost thirty years, keeping them happy enough to breed was pretty high on the priority list for those involved in the programs keeping them. 

“I know that you guys are having great success with breeding here at The Preserve, you have a pup and another on the way in the last three years, that’s amazing! But I’d still like to get them off an all-raw diet. They’ve been on that for a couple of years, they’ve got to be sick of it by now.” Stiles frowned at the menu Chris had produced.

“We have noticed an increase in hunting activity in the last year. But with a pup, it’s possible the hunting is for teaching purposes.” Chris offered.

“I think the pup is a little young for that. I mean sure, exposing them to hunting at their age is great, it sets a good foundation for when they’re a little older, but they aren’t actually old enough to be learning to stalk or attack prey. What are they hunting?” Stiles leaned forward, his thirst for new knowledge refusing to let him behave like an adult interviewing for a job and forcing him instead to act like a curious child that just spotted a shiny object.

“Mostly rabbit. The keepers have also seen evidence of gathering in their den when they’ve cleaned it. There are some fruit-bearing trees on the preserve, they’ve also seen the pup with edible berries.” Chris was smiling while he answered, so Stiles didn’t think he was too upset about the deviation in the standard interview.

“Hunting and gathering are both awesome enrichment activities, I'd like to see them continue to do that regardless of what their diet consists of. But I don’t want them so unhappy with what they're being fed that they’re depending on it. If they feel like their food sources are unstable it could put them off having more pups.” Stiles frowned back down at the menu.

With less than thirty packs left worldwide and no remaining wild werewolves, creating environments where the Were’s felt safe and comfortable enough to have new pups was the most important priority among the people involved in the effort to keep the species from going extinct entirely. After extensive testing with artificial insemination, the community at large had given up on it. Were’s didn’t take kindly to their bodies being messed with while they were sedated. Almost all of the pregnancies that took, which was a shockingly small number, were miscarried in the first trimester. The stress of the miscarriages wasn’t worth the potential reward of a full-term pregnancy, so none of the respectable facilities worldwide were using artificial insemination any more.

There was an increasingly vocal contingent pointing out that no matter what they did at this point, there was no saving the species in the long run. The number of Were’s had decreased to the point that inbreeding was eventually going to become unavoidable and nobody knew to what extent that could be allowed before genetic mutation became unavoidable instead of merely risked. That contingent demanded to know why money was being dumped into a program that was doomed to failure no matter what anyone did. And while Stiles could see the validity of their claim, he also couldn’t abide a quitter. He wasn’t going to give up on the Were’s until they got to that inevitable conclusion. Stiles wanted as many more generations as possible to be able to say that Were’s still existed in their lifetime.

“Agreed, that defeats the whole purpose.” Chris murmured, frowning at the menu schedule.

“What other enrichment activities are you guys using with them?” Stiles asked curiously. 

“We release small animals in the enclosure regularly to encourage the hunting. We also release large game animals the day of the full moon. They really seem to enjoy that. The pup has shown some interest in toys, they’ve got some that hold up to Were teething and some puzzle toys. A few of the adults have shown interest in the toys too. We haven’t discouraged that and put a few more toys in so there were enough to go around. The zookeeper’s themselves end up being enrichment toys on occasion.” Chris chuckled, rolling his eyes while he said the last bit.

“Really? You’re able to interact with them to that extent?” Stiles couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice at the thought. He’d never been able to get that close to a Were, but it had been his dream since he had watched the keepers at the Preserve interact with the Were's on a tour he’d taken in middle school.

“Yes. The keepers are able to go into the enclosure with them. The pack doesn’t know anything else, so we’ve never had a problem. A lot of them just avoid us when we go in, but some show interest in what we’re doing. The young adults seem to have made a game out of distracting the keepers and stealing whatever they brought in with them. Mostly harmless, if a little aggravating for the keepers at times.” Chris shook his head.

“That’s amazing! The intelligence that shows …” Stiles trailed off, thinking about the implications of that.

“They’re far from stupid, Stiles. There was a time in history that Were’s hid amongst humans and we never knew they were there.” Chris reminded him. It was much debated among scholars that studied Were's. Why were Were’s, even those in captive packs, not up to the intelligence level that they once had been? The leading theory was that as the number of Were’s declined, so did their hold on their more human side. Stiles himself wondered how much of it was just conditioned into them from birth.

“No, definitely not stupid! I have a few ideas for some enrichment that I’d like to add in too. If I get the job, I mean. No pressure!” Stiles held up his hands, not sure if he was going for surrender or nonchalance.

“Don’t worry. You’re the most qualified candidate I’ve interviewed so far. I had one web interview with a close second, but I don’t see any reason to pay for relocation when we have a candidate in our own backyard that’s more than capable.” Chris smiled at Stiles and closed the folder in front of him that no doubt contained Stiles’s entire educational experience crammed into three pages that would never fully explain what all he had experienced.

“Oh my God, are you serious? Please be serious!” The grin that broke across Stiles' face had to make him look manic, but Stles didn’t care. This was it, what he’d been revolving his life around since he was in high school. Everything that he had done, the debt he’d gone into, the two years he’d spent in Florida away from his Dad so that his Masters' work had come from one of the top schools in the country for his field. He was going to get his dream job and he wasn’t going to have to move halfway across the country away from his Dad to get it.

“Keep an eye on your email, we’ll send you an official offer with all the details. There’s some paperwork to fill out; emergency contact, your W4, that kind of thing. Get that back to me and we’ll get you a start date. I’m looking forward to working with you, Stiles. I think you’re going to fit in great around here.” Chris stood from his chair and offered Stiles his hand again.

“Thank you so much! You won’t regret this, I promise!” Stiles shook the offered hand with what he knew was too much enthusiasm, but couldn’t help himself. He didn’t stop smiling the whole drive home.

**Author's Note:**

> I would love and welcome any and all constructive criticism on this. I'm thinking about editing the final product to make it an original work, so any input that would help or improve on that would be awesome! I'm not sure how the posting schedule on this is going to, I have everything planned a good bit written, but it's in need of some serious editing and some additional scenes. I'm going to try for once a week.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, hope you all enjoy!


End file.
